Regular Blogger

Looks like I am a regular blogger. I have been doing this regularly for the past four years (mostly once a year). I have to keep up with the regularity. Should be making a new blog post for the year 2009 soon!!!

Can you see an end in sight?

Writing a blog after ages, I am in a pensive mood, reasonably disturbed by some recent developments..oops deterioration in the national political scene. Succession melee in a southern state, followed by a blatant change in the cabinet ministerial team with obviously no intent or consent from the PMs office...shameful state...Isn't the team of cabinet ministers essentially the team of the PM. Some power broker down south manages to shuffle this core team that is supposed to direct the administrative machinery of the country. Exit of a Harvard trained person from the top, elevation of a dysfunctional candidate from one ministry to the other, infusion of a barely literate person in to the cabinet league (obvious caste politics at work). An eternal optimist that I am, even I am not able to see an end in sight to the growing pettiness this nation's politics.
What can we do about these, watch in helplessness?...the glorious nation of ours is cursed, this sad state of political affairs is not going to end for generations...not to mention of the sham of social justice din - an aggressive attempt to ruin the few good things that survived 6 decades of Independence, in the name off reservation...shameless as they are...none of them could come forward to address the questions/concerns of one of the few functioning institutions of this hapless country, the Supreme Court.
This has been crowned and lauded as a sub continent, but a lot of more "sub" accolades await this glorious nation in the near future, it will be a sub-nation having sub-democracy, with subservant sub-citizens, struggling for subsistence, in a sub-system, that will foster subordinate subjects, forever subjugated, with a few unfortunate wise ones longing for the unattainable sublimity.

Prophecy of Dr. Mark Faber

Back after a long time. I joined work yesterday. I am yet to start work. In the mean time while I was reading up some interviews and articles by of investment guru Dr. Mark Faber and found his prophecy on oil prices. In this article he predicts that oil prices would shoot up and might even hit $100 a barrel. Well what is interesting about this is that he made this prediction in the year 2000. He nicely articulates the rationale behind his expectation. A very nice read...
Cheers

Source of Wealth

ISB now looks a little distant past but fresh though. In the last 2 weeks I have been around a few parts of South India. After winding up from Hyderabad, I travelled to Chennai, then to Trivandrum, Madurai, Kodai, and a few places in Tanjore district. While I was in a southern town of Mayiladuthurai I travelled past a few gas turbine power plants that have come up around the gas reserves in the Cauvery river basin. I was feeling that the area has found new potential for itself and has developed significantly. In economic terms there are a lot of wealth generating activities happening in this place. At that stage an old question of my mind came back "What is a wealth generating activity?" Can we generate wealth at all. If we ask a basic question of what is the source of wealth then it could be clear whether we can generate it or not. If we look at any of the so called wealth generating activity, wealth is accrued either from human labour (service), extracting and producing from non-renewable natural resources or extracting and producing from renewable natural resources. In all these the source of wealth is a product of nature. In a short argument we may see that nature is the only source of wealth and human activity can only transform wealth from some of the natural forms to forms with material utility. That was a quick thought.

ISB - the year that was

One of the most important years in the life of about 350 young men and women is coming to an end. Tomorrow is our graduation. We are getting ready to step in to occupations that are likely to launch us in to greater orbits of professional success. I just finished a dress rehersal for my graduation. Tomorrow Mr. Ratan Tata would preside over our graduation function as the chief guest. In the mean time you would have come across a lot of news about ISB placements for the batch of 2006. Here I am putting up a list of online coverages...did I hear you say that a global Indian school has just arrived :)

Biz grad offered Rs.10 mn pay packet

ISB grad bags Rs 1.04 cr salary deal

ISB beats out IIMs!

While it is amusing to see such interesting happenings in the race for talent, one fact is reinforced - there appears to be a significant mismatch in demand-supply equation for the knowledge work force. Rather than just comparing premier institutes of different kinds, focussing on big bucks, and eventually sensationalizing b-school placement statistics, it is time for the media to also do some value addition by focussing on why is there so much demand for management talent, can this demand be translated to greater opportunities for more people by increasing the capacity of education infrastructure and other questions of analytical nature. While the statistics attracts large public interest and hence media interest, it is high time that the media starts adding more value than just serve as a hyping duct of aggregate statistics.